Welcome to Day 2 of the ‘How to run a Valentine’s Day Promotion Campaign’ workshop. This workshop runs between 27th January to 17th February 2010. Designed specifically for Zen Cart store owners, each day we will focus on one task to guide you as you run a Valentine’s Day promotion campaign.
Today we are looking at implementing into your online store the Valentine’s Day Promotion Campaign Plan developed yesterday. It is important that your store is set up correctly so your customers have the ability to take up any promotional offers easily as they move through your checkout process.
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Jump to today’s task – Implement the Campaign Plan into your Online Store |
Before we get started with today’s task, how did you go with yesterday’s task? Your campaign plan needs to offer value to customers as well as meet your objectives without eating away your profit margin to an unacceptable level. Perhaps you have opted for a minimum spend before a customer qualifies for a product or shipping discount. Remember that offering value doesn’t always have to mean discounts. Customers are looking for solutions and value-add services you can offer may be just what they are looking for. Also think about services such as gift-wrapping, PDF guides, low-cost set-up services, access to online help guides and so on as offers you can promote this season.
On to today’s task.
Implementing your promotion offers
The best way of implementing your offers in your store depends on the nature of the promotions and your ecommerce platform. Today we will look at implementing different types of promotion offers in Zen Cart. To help, here’s a recap on Zen Cart Pricing – Sale Price, Special Price, Quantity Price and Discounts.
- Universal Discount
A discount, or stepped discounts, that apply to all products across the board. The discount is either a dollar amount or percentage value off and is generally applied at time of checkout in the shopping cart. This differs from Selected Items on Sale where the discounted prices are displayed in the catalog.
A Universal Discount can be applied in Zen Cart either via a Discount Coupon or a Group Discount. The discount can be set as a dollar amount or percentage value and can be redeemable against your entire catalog. See How do I offer coupons for my customers to redeem? for more details on setting up Discount Coupons and Group Pricing for more information on setting up a Group Discount. The Group Discount option can work well if your promotion applies to existing customers only. - Category Discount
A discount, or stepped discounts, that apply to a portion of your products, typically a category. The discount is either a dollar amount or percentage value off and is generally applied at time of checkout in the shopping cart. This differs from Selected Items on Sale where the discounted prices are displayed in the catalog.A Category Discount can be applied in Zen Cart via a Discount Coupon code. The discount code can be set as a dollar amount or percentage value and can be redeemable only against the categories specified. See How do I offer coupons for my customers to redeem? for more details on setting up Discount Coupons. - Selected Items on Sale
This tends to be the most common approach where selected items are listed with promotional pricing in the catalog (and also in the email campaign).In Zen Cart, there are two options for this type of promotion – Specials and Salemaker. Specials allow you to target individual products for promotional pricing whereas the Salemaker feature allows you to create a policy for reducing prices and then apply it to a group of (or all) products. A Salemaker promotion is useful for a limited time offer such as 20% off everything for 3 days only. - Buy One, Get One
This type of promotion comes in various formats such as ‘Buy 1 get 2nd half price’ or ‘Buy 2, get 3rd free’. This is more often than not a strategy to increase order value of orders placed by existing customers. The best way of implementing this type of promotion is through an Add On such as Better Together. This will allow you to create a number of different up-sell and cross-sell promotions. - Shipping Offers
Another popular type of promotion is free or discounted shipping. Variations include discounted regular shipping while still promoting express or overnight shipping. This promotion type is frequently used in conjunction with a minimum order value to maintain profitability.
Depending on the shipping modules you have set up in your Zen Cart store, there are opportunities to discount the shipping fees or set free shipping for orders over a specified amount. - Free Gifts
Free gifts can be anything from additional items, additional services (such as gift-wrapping or extended warranties) or additional information (such as a PDF guide ‘Looking after succulents’ or online support for a fixed period).Again, the Better Together Add On can provide an easy way to include a free gift with the purchase of selected products. - Contests/Give-aways
It may be tempting to hold a contest promotion, however due to the nature of the Internet it can be very difficult to cover all the legal aspects of a contest/give-away/sweepstake for a worldwide audience. Always consult with a specialist before proceeding with this type of promotion.Another Zen Cart Add On is Contest System. Don’t forget to look into the legalities if you are thinking of holding a contest from your online store. - Credit
Promotion offers can also take the form of in-store credits, reward points, deferred payment options and other financing offers.The Zen Cart Gift Certificates are perfect to send to customers as a ‘thank you’ for their loyalty, as a special promotion or as a welcome gift for new accounts.If you’d like to look at offering your customers the ability to collect reward points they can redeem at your Zen Cart store, take a look at the Reward Point Full Suite or the Store Credits and Rewards Points Module Add Ons.
The number of different ways promotions can be implemented by the number of different shipping modules by the number of Add Ons available in the marketing/promotion category leaves store owners with a confusing array of options to implement their promotions. For inspiration, don’t forget the Zen Cart Community Forum. Most likely there will be another store owner that has already asked the community something similar.
Testing
Whenever you make any changes to your online store, an important part of the change is testing. Your test plan (and yes, you really should have a written test plan) will need to include the various combinations applicable to your store. In other words, if you sell locally with sales tax applicable and internationally (without sales tax), you will need two test customers to to be able to test that orders are being calculated correctly. If you have implemented Group Discounts, you will need a test customer that is part of the group and another test customer that is not part of the group that is entitled to the discount. Remember, it is just as important to test that a promotion is not applied (when it shouldn’t be) as it is to test that the promotion is applied.
Today’s Task
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Good luck! Any questions, please use the comments section below.
